peterab

Dread Pirate Rob, that is a nice, clean looking repair job. I'm surprised the Sharpie looks so effective. For those in Australia; it is worth noting that MEK is a regulated substance since it can be used in the manufacture of drugs. It is generally unavailable here and may provoke questions if you try and find or import it. While MEK is the most effective glue for ABS there are other glues which will also melt ABS, notably some of the ones used for PVC pipes.

I haven't given up hope for a creator train in 2015 yet Though it is starting to become apparent I might be wrong.

A 'sketchy at best' rumour is all we've got. I've talked to some previously reliable sources and they see no indication of a new Creator train. It may be they've been cut out of the loop since LEGO has tightened up their new product leaks but it certainly isn't looking good. I think the general consensus in other themes is all the larger LEGO shop exclusive sets for this year are known (taking into account known releases such as LEGO shop calendars etc.). I think this is pretty much spot on. I'd probably suggest further that if we haven't seen anything by the end of Sept. the likelihood will be very small. Train sets according to tradition (* by which I mean I've been told this but cant verify it) have much higher sales in the US just before Christmas, so they pretty much need to be delivered and on shelves there by Oct. That means Europe will need to be either before or after the US for staggered production and release. After interferes with their efforts to keep everything else in stock for Christmas so I doubt they'd be planning that. Sept. seems a reasonable (though arbitrary) cut-off and ties in nicely with the sketchy rumour. Frankly I think the source of the rumour could have got mixed up with the Heavy Haul train. I would have expected a Q3 release to be known or at least announced by now.

Sold out only means they don't currently have any stock. They may still restock it. They tend to mark sets that are not coming back as retired or remove them from the site completely. It is in the Australian second half catalogue too, so I'd expect it to be available till at least Christmas online.

I love the colour choice on this too. I think the size and layout of this is also interesting, a nice compromise between reality and a practical LEGO build.

As always with mechanical features it is best to test them with real bricks. Most of us will have no experience with parallel tracks so the best we can do is guess. Testing is the only method that will resolve your question.

You also still have a problem with your couplings. The inner corners will hit each other on curves, you need to increase the gap between carriages to avoid this.

That is a great crane set, probably the best from my era. I'm obviously filled with nostalgia but I did like the multiple different builds with that set, I have two copies and a few extra spare parts of it so I can keep at least one of each built. There is also 128 from the blue track era, and a few more which were part of larger sets. None of the come close to the realism of the newer cranes though.

I don't think they are terrible (or LEGO would not continue with them) but they are no-where near the biggest selling sets. Partially because most kids don't find trains exciting (a LEGO designer at a con told me this in discussion, based on TLG's own market research) and partially because the only way they've found to sell them effectively is as complete sets so they are expensive and therefore don't compete in sales with $30 vehicle sets.

To me this seems obvious. A modular building is not a new idea to LEGO, so unless the design has something extremely novel they have never considered, why should it pass the review? The whole point of Ideas is to get new suggestions, not stuff that mimics what the LEGO designers have already produced. If LEGO thought two modular sets a year would sell well they could already do that, so any proposed LEGO idea is likely to compete with the official modular set in a way they are already choosing not to take up. I agree that a modular passing review is unlikely.

If I were in your position, I'd ask myself why each of the three possibilities you are considering appealed to you. From the point of view of value for money 3677 would seem to be best. It also fits with your currently European focussed collection. The Maersk train seems to be an intermediate point, you would need to buy the PF gear as well though, but you could buy it in stages to spread the cost, also to make it more affordable you could buy the parts for extra wagons and containers in other colours. The EN will be the most expensive option. You'd have to really love this train to want to try and get it now.

I think that is highly dependant on how the motor is treated and exactly when it was produced. There are certainly 9V motors whose thermal cutouts are way too sensitive (simply removing them or replacing them can fix this). Some 9V motors seem to be able to take a beating including many hours of pulling heavy loads with no ill effects, others with similar treatment will overheat and never pull heavy loads reliably again. The PF motors seem to be far more consistent in their performance, and are currently far more available. If I didn't belong to a club that still uses 9V for displays I would not own any 9V, and still prefer to use PF whenever possible.

With the RC baseplate with IR receiver and battery box, as you say the polarity of one motor can be reversed just by reversing the connection of that motor. Since you need an extension wire (or a single longer wire) for the second motor anyway, this turns out to be easy.

Or you could applaud that they've had another go at the successful yellow cargo train but this time in a colour used far more prototypically. They have included two flat cars like the blue cargo train with larger loads and a hopper which is far more realistic than the joke of a cattle car in the blue train. You also get two vehicles and a crane. As a bonus shout out to AFOLs we get more straight than curves. Obviously not you, but I love the heavy haul train despite having an unnecessary helicopter. I think it is way better _for my needs_ which is the only real way that makes sense to evaluate stuff IMHO. I like aspects of the blue cargo train but really only bought it to keep my collection of PF trains complete. I think the heavy haul train will have good sales in Germany so should do pretty well overall since Germany is still a huge market for LEGO.

Just like they never release two police stations or fire engines? We will probably see 60098 Heavy Haul Train before Christmas, and perhaps a creator train with a bit of luck, but I'd be surprised if it was another high speed train given the current city train will most likely be available for another couple of years at least. Add that to reports of poor sales for the Horizon Express and another high speed train seems very unlikely.

I've been told that warming the baseplates on a flat surface will let the flatten out. I think it was around 40C that was recommended but it would be best to do a search for the correct temperature.

When you put them up for sale please provide a link.

If your packing can't withstand someone else's 20kg parcel bouncing up and down on it in transit, then your packing isn't good enough.

I'm still hoping that the rumour of a 3rd quarter creator train is true. It could very well not be however, in fact it would not surprise me if we only see the release of the new city cargo train, the rumour being mistaken identity. It's all speculation at this point though.

That is very sad to hear. I was a little worried that a French high speed passenger train might not have very wide appeal, particularly with the American market. I guess that since the train market is so small and splintered into a lot of niches there is always a risk a detailed model of a particular prototype might not have wide enough appeal. That's why I bought a couple of both the Emerald night and Maersk trains for parts. Just doing my bit for train sales.

I think many people unfamiliar with the Swiss crocodiles might find the main model odd, but apart from the colour it is a pretty good representation of the prototype. The sales were not helped by the uncertainty around the 9V system at the time, I'd guess a similar product with a rarer base colour (dark green for example) would sell at least as well as the creator trains now, as long as it was supported by availability of track and the current city trains.

I kinda regret not buy a space monorail and the expansion pack at retail when I had the chance but only because I'm a completest. Otherwise I'm not really too fussed about them.

There is a limited number of exclusives, but it has been growing over time, so it is hard to know exactly what it is for this year. Also over the last couple of years LEGO has gotten a lot better at plugging the leaks so we are now getting far less advance warning of exclusive sets. Therefore predicting a creator expert train is anybodies guess. All we have is a single rumour of a third quarter release with no further details. It could happen, it may not. We'd all like to know, but there is little point in talking about it till we have something to talk about. There is no lack of care, there is a lack of concrete information.

The difficulty with this is the contacts on the bottom of the 12V motor will most likely foul on RC/PF/9V points.

Modifying a 9V motor for DCC is relatively easy, and it has been done. Why don't LEGO do it? For the same reason it killed off 9V. The track is more expensive and their target market of kids mostly don't care.